GPS BUSINESS NEWS

ABI: 26M handset navigation subscribers in 2010

Ludovic Privat — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 11:17:00 +0200

ABI Research expects the number of paying handset-based turn-by-turn navigation users to increase to 26 million by the end of 2010 with the Asia-Pacific region experiencing the strongest growth, wrote the market research company in a new report.

According to practice director Dominique Bonte, “The most significant driver for the uptake of handset navigation is expected to come from the iPhone, following Apple’s decision to finally enable turn-by-turn navigation on its latest 3.0 platform version.”

While application stores are expected to become an important channel for the distribution of navigation software, ABI notices that many carriers and handset manufacturers prefer to pre-install or bundle navigation software with their phones and offer plans based on strategic partnerships with navigation developers. Examples include Verizon/NIM, AT&T/Telenav, Vodafone/Telmap LG/Appello, HTC/ALK Technologies, and Samsung/Route 66. Market leaders Nokia and Vodafone have respectively opted to acquire navigation providers Gate5 and Wayfinder, allowing tighter integration of navigation and LBS services into their portfolios. Both approaches often coexist.

However, several barriers still remain in place. “High monthly subscription fees and data roaming costs will need to be addressed for off-board navigation on handsets to reach high penetration levels,” Bonte believes. “Free ad-funded navigation is one possible way forward with Locationet’s Amaze solution powering Technocom’s SpotOn GPS platform, Huawei’s new GPS phones, and Bouygues’ free navigation offer in France.”

Traffic information system with cellular data launched in Australia

Ludovic Privat — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 10:58:00 +0200

UK-based ITIS Holdings has announced today the commercial launch of the first traffic information system in Australia to use Cellular Floating Vehicle Data (CFVD), together with their local licensee Traffic Intelligence and cellular operator SingTel Optus. Covering over 70,000 km of roadway, the system will be branded Optus Traffic View (OTV) and has been available since June 2009.

Using ITIS TrafficScience CFVD technology, Traffic Intelligence and Optus are generating traffic information from anonymously processing signalling information from the Optus mobile network. This deployment follows a first pilot launched in Sidney at the end of 2006 by these three companies.

In addition to the Australian project, Traffic Intelligence is in early stage negotiations with both mobile phone carriers in New Zealand to deploy the ITIS technology. “If successful, we expect that opportunity to come to fruition in early 2010”, said Traffic Intelligence.

Garmin and BMW launch new bike-friendly satnav

Ludovic Privat — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 10:09:00 +0200

Garmin on Friday announced a co-development of a new motorcycle friendly satnav with BMW Motorrad. The so-called BMW Motorrad Navigator IV is based on a customized Garmin’s zūmo 660.

Like the previous product launched in 2006, this new BMW Navigator comes with an exclusive four-button motorcycle mount that enables quick-key functions. The mount and GPS device are vibration-tested, waterproof (IEC 529 IPX-7 standards), and designed to withstand fuel sprays and UV rays. The device offers a trip information page with speed, heading, altitude, and a customizable fuel gauge that can be modified to the motorcycle’s maximum fuel range.

The BMW Motorrad Navigator IV’s stereo (A2DP) Bluetooth wireless technology makes it possible for riders to pair their phone to a Bluetooth enabled helmet or handset so that they can talk on the phone or listen to MP3’s without having to remove their gloves or helmet. The Bluetooth connectivity also allows riders to share routes with other Navigator IV units, or by connecting the device to a computer and logging on to a free online community of routes specifically for motorcyclists. In addition, owners can also plan routes online through Google or MapQuest and send the routes or points of interest to the device before they begin their journey.

This navigation solution is expected to be available in the third quarter 2009 from authorized BMW Motorrad retailers in North America and Europe.

NAVTEQ to deliver its first Egyptian map data

Ludovic Privat — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 09:34:00 +0200

NAVTEQ announced last week the release of its first map for Egypt. “This product will be an Intermediate Map from NAVTEQ, which represents the highest 3rd party data available published in standard formats supported by NAVTEQ globally”, wrote the Chicago-based company in a press release issued in Dubai.

With this database drivers will have access to approximately 50,000 km of roads and more than 42,000 points of interest (POIs) referenced to the map to enhance the functionality of navigation systems.

"With the recent announcement that the Egyptian government has lifted its ban on GPS mobile phones and navigation systems, we expect to see rapid growth in demand for navigation and LBS solutions" stated Frank Pauli, Vice President EMEA Map and Content Products at NAVTEQ.

With an estimated population of over 78 million inhabitants, Egypt has become a very interesting market for both B2B and B2C geo-location applications since the Egyptian authorities lifted their ban on GPS in April 2009. In the country NAVTEQ will compete with Tele Atlas and Orion, a Middle East map data provider used by Google for Egypt. In April Tele Atlas said its coverage was around 25,000 kms of roads and 10,000 POIs.

NAVTEQ indicated that its future plans include upgrading Egypt to a full “NAVTEQ map” with geographic analysts driving the roads to collect and verify up to 260 attributes. NAVTEQ's Middle East and Africa coverage currently includes maps for Bahrain, Botswana, Kuwait, Lesotho, Namibia, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Swaziland and United Arab Emirates.

Nokia selects Sentinel for Australian live traffic on Ovi Maps

Ludovic Privat — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 17:21:00 +0200

Australian-based Sentinel Content Pty Limited announced today that it has been awarded a contract to supply Nokia with its real time traffic information service for Ovi Maps on the web and on mobile.

Source information for its Road Sense Traffic service includes real-time data from Australia’s road authorities and independent sources of road incident data. Sentinel’s journalistic traffic editors and data entry staff based in Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne, also check and collate information for accuracy and quality as incidents occur on the road network. The service also provides information about planned and scheduled events that affect traffic flow.

The service is available online from www.maps.ovi.com at no cost. To receive the service on a Nokia mobile phone a consumer can subscribe directly from their handset for AUD$6.99 per month or AUD$35.99 for a yearly subscription. At launch, the service will cover the major population areas of Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane. In the future, the service will expand to other capital cities and the major interstate highways in between cities.

In addition to Australia, Sentinel plans to extend coverage of its Road Sense Traffic service to New Zealand and South East Asia, in order to offer a consistent regional service.

TomTom: weak Q2?

Ludovic Privat — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 15:31:00 +0200

According to Reuters, PND maker TomTom said on Wednesday that shipments and average selling prices increased in the second quarter compared with the first but by less than expected, due to weak economies.

TomTom also stated its gross margin remained strong in the second quarter and it felt comfortable that earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) were in line with market expectations.

"Our outlook for 2009 remains challenging in light of low consumer spending," TomTom said in a statement, reported by Reuters. When announcing their result for the first quarter 2009 last April, TomTom decided not to update its 2009 full year guidance which were set (in February) at 11 to 12 million PND units and revenue of €1.4 billion to €1.6 billion.

On Monday this week shareholders of the Dutch company approved a €359 million rights issue (announced two weeks ago) which was decided to lower TomTom’s debt resulted from last year acquisition of digital map maker Tele Atlas.

Dell to enable location on Netbooks with GPS & WiFI

Ludovic Privat — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 22:05:00 +0200

Starting next week in the United States, Dell will offer the Dell Wireless 700 location solution for their Mini 10 netbook. This solution is a combination of hardware and software powered by Broadcom's A-GPS and Skyhook Wireless' Wi-Fi position solution.

On the service side, the Dell Wireless 700 location system integrates a turn-by-turn navigation software from ALK (CoPilot 7). Even more interesting, Dell is also going to offer The Loki Dashboard (from Skyhook Wireless), a location-aware web portal that uses the netbook's location engine to customize widgets for news, weather, tweets, photos, events (Flickr, Loopt, Brightkite), etc. Dell Wireless 700 location solution owners can easily access the Loki Dashboard via Internet Explorer on the netbook (dell.loki.com).

“With location as an important feature on existing and future Dell netbooks, a new platform for third party apps has arrived”, said Skyhook in an email to GPS Business news. “Developers of familiar apps like weather, social networking and games that have exploded on Smartphones as well as brand new categories will be able take advantage of the unique netbook user experience, with its larger screen size and longer user interaction times.”

Dell Wireless 700 location solution will initially support Windows XP. Vista and Windows 7 support will come later. “The Mini 10 is the first system that we'll offer with the optional Dell 700 Wireless location solution” said Dell in a blog post. More operating systems, regions and netbooks are expected to be announced at a later stage.

Joost Schreve, everytrail.com: "We are on a path to derive significant ad revenues"

Ludovic Privat — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 14:02:00 +0200

GPS Business News interviewed with joost Schreve, CEO at GlobalMotion, the company operating everytrail.com a fast growing website dedicated to GPS-enabled travel content and stories.

GPS Business News: Can you remind us a bit about how and when you started GlobalMotion?
Joost Schreve: I started GlobalMotion in 2006 because I saw an emerging opportunity at the intersection of two major trends: the transformation of the web towards becoming increasingly interactive and social, and the fact that more and more devices were becoming location aware. At the same time I saw that many start-ups were focusing either on location-aware content consumption, or on location-based social networking. I felt that this left a huge blank space for what I call location-centric personal publishing. My vision is that the most compelling way to share travel experiences is by creating a visual experience, based on a map with geotagged photos and other geotagged media. The conventional travel blog, a white page of text with some photos sprinkled in, doesn’t really tell the story of a trip.

We launched EveryTrail.com to enable GPS and smartphone users to upload GPS tracks, photos and stories, while at the same time we built out the technology platform that we license to corporate customers.

GPS BN: How fast is the website growing in terms of users and content?
JS: Traffic at EveryTrail.com is growing very fast, currently at 500% per year. Our growth has been purely driven by word-of-mouth and organic search traffic. We have about 60,000 members now, who upload an ever increasing number of trips, ranging from sightseeing tours in the word’s major cities all the way to 4-week treks in the world’s remotest areas. Our database now consists of about 115,000 unique travel experiences, many of them richly illustrated with geotagged photos and detailed stories.

GPS BN: You have both a B2C and a B2B business, can you explain us how it works and what are their revenue models?
JS: On the consumer site we have EveryTrail.com, which is an ad-supported online service. Because of the rate at which our traffic is growing we are on a path to derive significant online advertising revenues. But currently our B2B revenues are much larger. We license our software using a SaaS model to some of the world’s leading brands. Our customers use our platform to offer our trip sharing functionalities to their customers. We currently see strong demand for white-label social networks focused on travel and outdoors. Our corporate customers use these to increase customer engagement and loyalty. It provides them with a great channel to establish an ongoing relationship with their user communities.

GPS BN: Who are your customers today in B2B?
JS: Currently I can share two live customers. The first is Globalstar, makers of the Spot Satellite Messenger. The Spot Messenger is a very cool device, used by tens of thousands of people worldwide, and growing fast. The device broadcasts its location automatically at set intervals, or triggered by the user, via its proprietary global satellite data network. The device is used by travelers to share their whereabouts with their loved-ones at home, for safety and pleasure. We take care of the online user experience, by providing an geo-social network at www.spotadventures.com, that gives their users the ability to share their travel experience, both live and after their trip, add photos, stories, and allows their family, friends and other followers to view, rate, and comment on their travels.

Continued...

The other customer that I can announce is REI, the world’s largest outdoor retailer. We’ve started our cooperation by creating an iPhone app that supports their “Bike your Drive” campaign. It’s a fun and useful app that lets consumers track their bike rides, while estimating how many calories they burned, how much CO2 exhaust they saved, and how much money they kept in their pockets by leaving their car parked. People can also take pictures of their bike rides, and upload their recorded routes to EveryTrail.com.

Later this summer we will announce 2 large new customers, and more later this year.

GPS BN: Is it important to have a B2C business to sell in B2B in your field of operation?
JS: For us it’s very important for several reasons. The first is that our consumer site www.EveryTrail.com gives us insight and teaches us what consumers want and don’t want. We launch new features very frequently and learn quickly what works and what doesn’t. Since our 60,000 members are very vocal we are pretty good at predicting to our B2B customers what features their users will want. The second reason is that EveryTrail serves as a proof that our software not only scales and can handle high levels of traffic, but also meets the expectations of consumers. Our corporate customers have repeatedly mentioned this as one of the key reasons to select GlobalMotion. Finally, EveryTrail also serves as a great online customer acquisition channel: Two of our largest corporate customers were looking for a geo-social network solution like ours and found us by searching online. Since EveryTrail.com has strong organic search engine rankings, we pop up on top of search results pages for many queries, and that’s how several companies found and approached us.

GPS BN: if we look at the website functionalities, what are the recipes to make it sticky for the existing user and viral to reach non-users?
JS: The entire user experience is important. Users want a solid site that’s easy to use, has compelling features, and allows them to leverage some of their existing online identities and content repositories. We have for example integrated our site with Flickr for photo imports and with Facebook and Twitter for sharing of content.

There is no silver bullet. Our experience tells us that there is not one single feature that in and of itself makes a big difference. We have made thousands of small and large improvements in the course of the last 3 years of development and it’s the combined set of features and enhancements that drives the satisfaction and retention rate of our users. And many improvements are still to come. In addition to the web site, the iPhone as well as other smartphones have been another trigger for growth. Besides providing a tremendous user experience, the fact that these devices now have GPS integrated has opened the door to more people who didn’t have personal GPS devices.

GPS BN: Do you feel that privacy is important for your users when sharing geo-aware UGC?
JS: Absolutely. The combination of location-aware apps and personal information makes privacy an important area of attention for us. The most important part of this is to be very open and upfront to users about the fact that they are sharing their location online and giving them the tools to keep their data private when they want that.

GPS BN: in terms of funding and profitability, where are you standing today?
JS: We have raised series A capital from private investors. The first quarter this year we were nearly break-even and our goal is to reach profitability this year.

GPS BN: What do you envision for the next 5 years?
JS: We are playing in a very high-growth market. The potential for growth is enormous. Demand from both consumers and business is accelerating. The mobile ecosystem is becoming more and more open, driven by innovation in distribution and open platforms like iPhone and Android. There is lots of competition, which will inevitably lead to consolidation and a shake-out. Within 5 years the large field of competitors will have to be reduced to a handful of leaders. My goal is to make sure we remain a leading force in this market, and I am confident we are going to achieve that.

Trimble signed up T-Mobile USA for outdoors GPS apps

Ludovic Privat — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 13:51:00 +0200

Trimble announced today that its range of outdoor applications is now available for customers of T-Mobile USA, Inc. on their selection of GPS-enabled phones.

"We're proud to add the AllSport GPS, Geocache Navigator and Trimble Outdoors applications to T-Mobile's web2go catalog," said Venetia Espinoza, director, mobile applications and partner programs, T-Mobile USA. These three applications (sport monitoring, geocaching and outdoor mapping/navigation) cost $5.99 each per month (plus taxes).

With this new deal Trimble Outdoors applications are now available from all leading U.S. wireless operators, in addition to Blackberry App World. At the CTIA trade show last April, in an interview with GPS Business News, Rich Rudow, managing director was explaining that his next step would be to localize its catalogue into European languages and start working with international operators and non-operator distribution channels. “We will get more aggressive about our international effort in 2010”, he said.

Multimap Renews Contract With deCarta

Ludovic Privat — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 12:24:00 +0200

Geospatial platform supplier deCarta announced yesterday that Multimap, a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft, has renewed its contract for the use of deCarta’s Drill Down Server as its core underlying platform to provide scalable mapping and driving directions services. Multimap has been working with deCarta since 2007.

Multimap attracts over 10 million unique users, registers more than 190 million page impressions every month, and is one of the UK's most visited websites. The British company was bought by Microsoft in December 2007 for $50 million; it is now a part of the Bing team in the Online Services Group.

Nextar selects Nav N Go, NAVTEQ traffic for low-cost PND

Ludovic Privat — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 15:09:00 +0200

Personal Navigation Device (PND) supplier Nextar has announced the introduction of its first model to include Nav N Go’s iGo Amigo navigation software. The unit, model 43LT, that retail in the United States for $129, comes with a free lifetime subscription for real-time traffic reports by NAVTEQ. This service is supported by location-based advertising (ads and coupons) displayed to users without compromising their safety.

”Nextar is excited to be working with Nav N Go, a company we believe is bringing user-friendly and trendy navigation software to market that even first-time navigation users can enjoy,” stated Eddy Zheng, Nextar founder. “Nav N Go’s investment in research and development, coupled with their ability to tailor their software to the US market makes them a strong partner.”

Nextar 43LT has a 4.3” TFT touch-screen display and Text-to-speech technology to pronounce road names. The device includes 1.6-million points of interest and digital map data for the 50 U.S. states and Puerto Rico, supplied by NAVTEQ. The unit also comes with 3D landmarks and sign-post viewing. Additional map data can be bought online for this device via the naviextras.com platform operated by Nav N Go with a Nextar branding.

This is the first non-Garmin PND to feature the ad-funded traffic service from NAVTEQ. To be shortly available from BestBuy.com, this device is likely to sell in volume thanks to its packed feature set and its low price.

CSR and SiRF complete merger

Ludovic Privat — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 13:29:00 +0200

CSR and SiRF Technology Holdings said today they have completed their merger on Friday June 26.

The combined CSR group enters the list of the top 10 fabless semiconductor companies, said a press release from CSR. Based on CSR's and SiRF's results for fiscal year 2008, on a pro forma basis, the combined companies would have had sales of approximately $927 million. The enlarged CSR group will have its global headquarters in Cambridge, UK, with SiRF’s headquarters in San Jose California becoming CSR’s US headquarters.

“CSR and SiRF have a shared vision of using innovation to bring the benefits of wireless connectivity and location to mainstream consumers and enterprises and to enable new and exciting user experiences”, commented Kanwar Chadha, co- founder of SiRF and newly appointed board member and Chief Marketing Officer of CSR. “We believe that through this merger, our customers and consumers will derive benefits from a much stronger player whose focus is on delivering best in class connectivity and location platforms.”

Former SiRF stockholders own approximately 27% and CSR shareholders own approximately 73% of the combined company.

ALK offers navigation on Android phones

Ludovic Privat — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 11:25:00 +0200

Mobile navigation and transportation software editor ALK Technologies today announced that its turn-by-turn navigation software CoPilot Live is now available for Android-based mobile phones. It can be purchased and downloaded immediately from Android Market for devices such as HTC Magic, T-Mobile G1 and the new HTC Hero.

The full version of CoPilot Live is available for £25.99 for UK and Ireland maps and £59.99 for all Europe. The software features a range of CoPilot ‘Live’ services, including real-time traffic alerts, 5-day weather forecast information and a new location sharing service called CoPilot LiveLink which allows users to share their location with friends using CoPilot.

CoPilot is the second navigation software made available to the Android platform after TeleNav launched its application for the T-Mobile G1 in the United States.